An Investigation of Hostile and Alexithymic Characteristics in Breast Cancer Patients

Abstract

Two measures of personality characteristics, the Personality Deviance Scale and the Toronto Alexithymia Scale, were administered to a total sample of 448 women and a subsample of 100 women, respectively, attending two breast-screening centers in Athens. The relative risk of breast cancer between women with low denigratory attitudes towards others and women with high scores in this scale was 2.31. Statistically significant relations were not noted between the mean scores of alexithymia factors and breast cancer diagnosis. Our findings point to the conclusion that breast cancer patients can be distinguished from healthy women on the basis of their cognitive activity, characterized by rare denigratory thoughts.

Alexithymia in Cancer Patients: Review of the Literature

“…Eight studies provided information about staging, without including the stages in the analysis [23,24,25,26,33,35,36,37]; one specified that curative cases were included [34] and seven provided no information about the stages [19,22,27,32,38,39,40]. …”

“…In four studies alexithymia was assessed before cancer diagnosis, but no information was provided about the existence of other diseases or treatments [19,23,24,36]. Two studies specified whether patients were in palliative or curative treatment [33,35], one that alexithymia was assessed before surgery [38], one that patients underwent surgery and that analyses were controlled for adjuvant therapy [34], and four provided no information about treatment [22,32,39,40].…”

“…Four studies found no statistically significant difference in alexithymia mean scores between patients and controls for patients with breast cancer [35,36] and for patients with different types of cancer (breast, lung, colon, prostate, ovarian and other) [40]; in one study no differences in alexithymia mean scores were observed in men with medical diseases (such as cancer) and with psychosomatic or psychiatric disorders [22]. Differences between cancer patients and controls were observed for women with breast cancer, who showed significantly higher alexithymia scores [19,39], and for women with cervical dysplexia, who showed a higher prevalence of alexithymia (42.5%) than healthy women (12.8%) [24].…”

“…Studies on the impact of sociodemographics showed inconsistent results due to large variations in study design. Nonetheless one might conclude that in cancer patients alexithymia seems not to vary between men and women [33,34,36] and between patients with different levels of education [33]. In contrast, alexithymia might have a different development in boys or girls facing cancer [27].…”

“…Two studies concluded that alexithymia could not be identified as a predisposing factor for the development of cancer either in women with breast cancer [36] or in men developing different kinds of cancer over a period of 10 years [22]. Five studies, conducted by three different research teams, found that alexithymia is a trait that could be part of a cancer-prone personality [19,23,24,32,38].…”